Why Wind Power Is Not Equal To Coal Fired Power

How often have you heard that Wind power is intermittent, but has anyone ever explained that to you, or shown just how it actually is intermittent, and what it means.

What if you need a dedicated amount of power all the time? Can wind power be relied on to generate that dedicated amount of power?

Over the last Month, I have been detailing the closure of the 53 year old Hazelwood brown coal fired power plant in the State of Victoria here in Australia, and comparing that plants power generation with wind power across the whole of Australia, and that Post is at this link.

Challicum Hills Wind Power Plant near Ararat in Victoria Australia.

The main comparison was with all the wind plants across the whole of Australia, but I was also including the data for just the wind plants in the same State that the Hazelwood plant was in, Victoria. While the Hazelwood plant had a Nameplate of 1600MW originally, its old age meant that it could no longer generate that level of power, but after 53 years it was astonishing that this ancient plant could still actually manage 86% of that original total, and that was 1380MW at its maximum with all 8 Units in operation. Across the whole 31 days immediately prior to its closure, the plant averaged a daily power generation of 1306MW, which gave the plant an effective Capacity Factor of 95% for that Month.

However when compared to just the wind plants in Victoria, the result was even more startling. There are currently 15 of those wind plants, and the oldest of them is the Challicum Hills Wind Plant, now only 14 years old. The total Nameplate for all those wind plants just in the State of Victoria is 1485MW, so there are around 850 of those turbines on poles around the State. That 1485MW nameplate is higher than the 1380MW (the recent maximum) of Hazelwood.

Yet, across those same 31 days in the lead up to the closure of Hazelwood, the average daily generation from all those 15 wind plants with 850 individual generators only came in at only 359MW, and that is just a tiny bit more than what was being generated from just TWO of the ancient Hazelwood’s 8 Units, an astonishing fact. Here you have 850 wind turbines and they can only generate as much power as two 53 year old generators.

However, when you say that the AVERAGE daily power from those wind plants was only 359MW per day, that is a straight line average across those 24 hours, where the power being generated is up and down across the whole day, so it is averaged to that amount.

So then, what does that mean, and can it be directly compared with an equal amount of Nameplate to show you how the wind power is variable, or intermittent?

I mentioned above that the Nameplate for all that wind power is 1485MW, so all we need do is to find an equivalent Nameplate from a (still operating) coal fired power plant and compare directly the power generated on a typical day by both of them, wind, and coal fired.

In the same State of Victoria, and not all that far from the now closed Hazelwood plant is the Loy Yang Power Plant, which also generates its power using brown coal. That Loy Yang Plant has two complexes at the same plant, Loy Yang A, and Loy Yang B. In all, there are six turbine/generator Units, and each of them has a total Nameplate of 525MW, for a total Nameplate for that plant of 3150MW. Now as wind power in Victoria has a total Nameplate of 1485MW, we only need the data from THREE of those Units at Loy Yang, so three generators of 525MW, hence a total of 1575MW, and 15 wind plants with 850 generators totalling 1485MW, and that’s about as close as we can get to equivalent Nameplate in the same State.

So now we have the Same State, and the (approximate) same Nameplate, and all we need to do now is directly compare one with the other, and for that, we will use the same day, Wednesday 29th March 2017, three days ago.

Same State, same Nameplate, and same day.

The image below shows the total power generated by those 850 wind turbines at 15 wind plants.

You can see the date at the top, and under the chart are the wind power plants. Here I have only used the wind plants in that State of Victoria, indicated in the legend under the chart, where only the State of Victoria is ticked, and the plants in Victoria are ticked.

The solid black line indicates the sub total for power generated by all those wind plants in the State on that day, and the squiggly coloured lines under that solid black line are the running totals for each individual wind plant.

The Image below (also taken from the same site) details each of those Victorian wind plants, and at right is the total Nameplate for that wind plant, and at the bottom right, the overall total Nameplate for all of them, 1485MW.

The image below (also taken from the same site, and on the same day) details the power generated by those three generators at the Loy Yang coal fired plant, and as you can see under the graph, the only boxes ticked are for Loy Yang B Unit 2, (LOYYB2) Loy Yang A, Units 2 and 3, (LYA2 and LYA3) and the Sub Total box. The solid black line across the top indicates the total power generated, and the coloured lines below, and there are three of them there, indicate the power generated by the three generator Units.

Now, go back to the top image of the power generated by the wind plants. Notice that it goes up and down across that 24 hour period. That is the total power being generated at those points in time across the day. That can be averaged out to a straight line across the page, and that average is 550MW, give or take a little. That actually gives all these wind plants combined a Capacity Factor of 37%, which is good, because the yearly average for wind power is only 30%, so here I have actually picked a day when wind power is doing well, generating more power than the average.

Note that the average is 550MW, and that is slightly more than for just ONE of those three Units at the Loy Yang coal fired plant.

Now look at the second image for power generation from that Loy Yang plant, and note that the total power is a straight line across the page, and is just a fraction higher than 1600MW, just a small amount less than THREE times the power being delivered from all those 15 wind plants with 850 generators.

So here we have wind power on a good day, and it still does not make more power than ONE generator at ONE coal fired power plant.

Okay then, as to that intermittency thing I mentioned at the top of the post.

I have shown here that wind power delivers what can only be referred to as pitifully low power when compared to the same Nameplate for coal fired power, but look closely at that image for wind power generation.

Even though I averaged the power to a straight line across the page for the full 24 hours, note how the power generation went up and down. The maximum on this good day was where it hovered around 900MW for about 4 hours,and note here that even on this very good day for wind power, it still did not even get close to its maximum of that 1485MW total Nameplate. That is because they are spread out across such a vast area, with the wind blowing at optimum in some areas but not in others, and also due in part to the fact that at some of those wind plants, there are turbines that do not work any more, and compare that with the now closed ancient relic, Hazelwood, which after 53 years, could still get all 8 Units operational, while wind power, with all plants younger than 14 years have turbines that don’t work any more.

Of greater importance here, note also the minimum power generated by those 850 turbines at 15 wind plants, only 200MW, and how power generation spent almost 14 hours below the average of that 550MW.

That is the intermittency spoken about when it comes to wind power. It is up and down, and never the same, and no one really has a good idea on when it will be up or down.

Note again how the Nameplate is 1485MW, and yet at times, all those wind plants are only generating 200MW, which is only 13.5% of the maximum.

What happens if this is all you have, and you require the full 1485MW all the time?

Now note the coal fired power generation, and how it delivers the full amount all the time, not up and down, not an average of a third of that requirement, not 900MW, not 200MW, but the full 1600MW all the time.

Wind power is intermittent, not only on a yearly basis, but on a daily basis, and even on an hourly basis.

When wind power falls to 200MW, that power to make up the full requirement has to come from somewhere else, because wind power is not supplying it.

When the average is only one third of the total Nameplate, that power to make up the full requirement has to come from somewhere else, because wind power is not supplying it.

Even at its maximum power delivery for those few hours it actually achieves it, that power to make up the full requirement has to come from somewhere else, because wind power is not supplying it.

So, if you need a dedicated amount of power ALL the time, I have shown here that it cannot be achieved with wind power. It is intermittent at best, and it will always require backup.

Coal fired power, as vilified as it has become, does just that. It generates its full power all the time, and does not require any backup.

Wind Power IS NOT equal to coal fired power, and it never will be.

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

Anton I am currently working on the data that you are writing about. That is the AEMO data five minute data for 2016. Consequently I have been checking for the accuracy of my import of generator data. I thought I should make you aware that what you wrote about the Victorian wind farms is not quite correct. You may have been slightly misled by the table of wind farms on the Aneroid site. In fact there are only 10 active. You will be able to see this if you go to the actual graph and select just Victoria there are only 10 active. In 2016 there were nine a new one has come online in 2017 that is ARFW1. This throws your calculations out a little but the general thrust I agree with entirely. My intention is to use the data I have to calculate the efficiency of the wind farms and how much energy storage would be needed to produce stable electricity. I have done previous calculations which causes me to believe it is far larger than anyone imagines because of the intermittent nature of wind.

thanks for leaving this comment. What you mentioned was something I noticed also, that the Victorian data was incomplete at the site. I have been using that site for many years now, and have watched it evolve over those years with the major update and the addition of power generation data from other sources as well. In the main, I concentrated on the data from the wind plants in South Australia, and this is the first time I have actually used the data from Victoria for a Post. I have also noticed that some of the data for South Australia was missing as well, along with some from Tasmania also. They are only minor problems as the major data is all there, enough to give an image of how wind power is only marginal at best. With respect to Victoria, that Ararat wind plant is the most recent to come on line, and as far as I can ascertain, it is not fully up and running to its total capacity yet. I have also noticed an oddity with the Macarthur wind plant, the largest in the Country with a Nameplate of 420MW. It seems to be only generating at half capacity at best, reaching around that half way mark and then flat lining. The oldest of those wind plants, Challicum Hills, now 14 years old, also does not reach its maximum, and for this plant I take that to mean that some of the turbines at that plant do not work any more, because even with the wind at its optimum across the site, it has never reached its maximum. This is the first time I have used the data from those Victorian wind plants, and it only came up because of the major Post I did with respect to the closure of the Hazelwood coal fired plant, and the comparison I did with that plant and wind power. I used the data for all the wind plants for that article, and also mentioned those Victorian ones because they were in the same State as Hazelwood.

Again, thank you for your comment, and for pointing out that slight anomaly.

I have just completed a spreadsheet that shows the actual performance of all active wind power stations. This is from AEMO data issued in 2016. In that year MacArthur was 28% and Challicum 31%. I calculate that in 2016 the installed plate capacity of wind power stations was 3675 MW and their percentage yield was 34%. A particular peeve of mine is that a lot of commentators give power rather than energy my percentages have been calculated on energy that is GW hours. The year 2016 yielded a shade over 11,000 GW hours from wind power stations. Assuming Hazelwood has a power capacity of 1.4 GW means it could have produced 12,300 GW hours in the same period.

I have an interest in this deluded madness for selfish reasons, you are in Queensland I am in the ACT but both of us more than likely will be affected by this madness brought on by the environmental activist. The rising percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere will not affect me but certainly the lack and cost of electricity will. If you are of religion you pray but if you are an environmental activist you build renewable energy. I argue let us just pray for CO2 to decrease it will have the same effect and cost a lot less.

BTW I am a retired analyst/programmer and my AEMO data is on a personal Microsoft SQL Server database. I have three years of data which makes the database about 23 GB.

thanks for this. Just like you, it annoys me also that people proposing and supporting renewable power use Nameplate instead of actual power being generated and delivered. It’s almost endemic, so much so now, that the ordinary person believes that a Wind plant with a Nameplate of (say) 420MW actually think that it delivers that 420MW total power all the time. It’s a difficult thing to explain that term Capacity Factor, and what it means. It happens with all forms of renewable power. It’s in the interests of the people pushing those forms of renewable power to have the ordinary people think in this manner. If the ordinary person was to understand the truth about that Capacity Factor, then I think there would be more questions asked about wind and solar power, and that’s just not happening. Over the years I have used the year round average Capacity Factor of 30% when it comes to wind power, and in the main, that figure is borne out as close to correct when it comes to Australian wind power. Thank you for your comments, and while we struggle to explain the truth of these things, it’s nice to know there are in fact people trying to spread the truth.

those wind plants not indicated on the data for those Victorian Wind Plants are the five of them with the lowest Nameplate, and are only between 4MW and 21MW, and in total, all five wind plants only add up to 75MW, so it would make little difference to the overall total for those Victorian wind plants, as that only comes in at only 5% of the total Nameplate, so it would have very little, if any, impact on any total power generated really. All 18 wind plants for South Australia are indicated though.

The smaller ones you mention the ones that are of small capacity just do not appear in the data for 2016.

I intend to calculate shortly within the week in fact what exact storage capacity you need to stabilise the wind farm installation. The data gives me an output in megawatt-hours every five minutes. I will take that and add it to a hypothetical storage facility. Then I will draw down an energy estimate. I will iterate through this for every five minute period, if the storage facility goes negative abort the loop. Decrement the drawdown and then start from the beginning again.

If I get to the point that the drawdown goes to zero then I will have to increment the storage. This is roughly my method. I have been thinking about this for some time and cannot devise any other way of of determining this. The huge difficulty is the variability of the wind. People say it is intermittent, and that I think is incorrect because in my mind that means it is off and on. But it is best viewed as a varying input which for individual stations can be anywhere between zero and maximum plate capacity.

Difficulties are is the five-minute data a snapshot or an average for the five minutes? The stations are spread across the entire grid there are drops of 5 to 10% when you go from one segment of the grid to another. How can one calculate for that simply. It will be a “solution” only for the year it is applied to.

The problem I see with storage is twofold really. The first problem is that with storage, it’s a case of using the output of the wind plants as it is being generated to charge up that storage. You either use the output as it is being generated, or not use it because it is being used to charge the storage, keeping in mind that there is only one source of that power generation. It is not new energy, only energy that has already been generated, then stored and then used at a later date, with all the inherent losses that brings about.

The second problem I see is the size of the storage needed, absolutely huge, and most probably not available at any time in the foreseeable future, at what would only be an enormous cost, and with the inherent problem of the life span of that storage facility, the losses within that system, and then the replacement cost for new storage, and disposal of the now used storage. Also with storage on this huge scale, what you are talking about is in MegaWattHours, the actual time for that re-supply would be small in nature, and for such a huge cost, something that would not be worthwhile as a serious method of power supply.

The exercise you are doing sounds like a valid thing to do, if only to show the immense scale of the problem for such an enormous cost, and for such a small amount of time.

I’ve done a fair bit of work on this since I last commented. As I noted before I have the complete record of dispatch SCADA for 2014, 2015 and 2016. If you have some sort of storage facility for electricity that will store 850 GW hours then you can get about 30% of your plate capacity for three years. At times this will be nailbiting critical. A fossil fuel power station of about 1 GW would replace everything. The cost difference has got to be huge but I will let others work that out.

Thinking about that I thought what if the most efficient wind power station in South Australia was supplemented with the 100 MW Tesla powerpack. It is in fact 400 MWh. That power station is Snow town south and it has a capacity factor of 41%. This set up will only produce 10% of the plate capacity of 126 MW. The problem is that it is too small to back up even one. It might be obvious to most but it has to be stated such a device is finite. The energy being produced in a day is usually a lot more than the capacity of the powerpack. We are trying to get stability though and to get that we must be running near 0.3 GW hours per day. What this ends up meaning is that about 540 GW hours has to be dumped because there is nowhere to put it.

If you increase the energy storage to about 8 GW hours things start to work. You can then get about 30% plate capacity but you will still be losing energy because there is nowhere to store it.

But Anton “Craigthomas” has informed me (and I believe you [on JoeNova’s blog]) electricity is all about “load following” after the consumer load has changed.

Maybe you need to show that apart from ‘baseload’ generation, reliable electricity supply generation is also about being able to reasonably accurately predict forthcoming load variation so that the intermediate level generators are made ready to track the forthcoming predicted load peaks or troughs, and not attempt to ‘load follow’ after the demand has happened…

It’s the oddest thing when it comes to explanations about electrical power generation. The people who give the most advice are economists and politicians. It never seems to be those people with electrical engineering qualifications, and the very minute they attempt to give any information, they get howled down ….. by, umm, economists and politicians.

We, the people, can and must insist on reliable, proven power generating plants that actually work, not the pipe dream fantasies of a few day-dreamers.
tonytran2015 has a good idea for combining intermittent power sources, such as wind and solar, with hydroelectric. However I doubt if the cost of wind or solar power would make it feasible. Hydroelectric power by itself is a worthwhile investment.
Now I’m in favor of private companies investing in alternate sources of energy, WITHOUT using Taxpayers money!
If it’s feasible private investors will finance.

Wind power plants need to be installed together with equal capacity (or even Reversible) Hydroelectric Dams to supply pure Green power. Unfortunately the Greenies don’t want the dams. So there cannot be any steady power supply from the winds!
I am from Vic. Aust. and i can see that power price now has increased drastically due to the Green obsession.

We Blog the World

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,688 other followers

Blog Stats

2,267,216 hits

We Are Looking For People With Opinions!

No writing experience
needed. Please email us
at:papwp atyahoo dotcom
(Replace at with @ and dot with . )
(Do not leave any spaces.)Help shape your world with words.Read I'm Not a Writer!NEW! Blogs that are worthwhile reading or viewing just below.

PA Pundits – International

Putin: Obama “Idiot” For Adopting Socialism

MOSCOW (SR) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned the Obama administration against adopting further socialism, saying Russian history clearly proves it is a recipe for failure. “Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history,” said Putin. “President Obama and his fellow Democrats are either idiots or deliberately trying to destroy their own economy.” ... Read more plus comments: Click on Image or use this URL: http://wp.me/pJrS-3pj

Items of Importance!

2. Don't miss an article! Use the RSS feed above or the Email below to stay informed!

3.We look Best with a minimum Screen resolution of 1024×768 and Firefox Browser. It's Free and Safer than Internet Explorer! Upgrade Now!

4.Below are our Archives and other News and Blog Feeds for your viewing pleasure. Also our Blog Rolls, etc., of other worthwhile contributors to Fair and Balanced News and Commentaries that you won't find in the Leftist Media that dominates the TV, Radio and Newspapers. Stay Honestly Informed!

During the French and Indian War, 20-year-old Daniel Boone, and his cousin-future General Daniel Morgan, served as wagon drivers for the British in the Battle of Monongahela, July 9, 1755. Also in that battle, 23-year-old George Washington served as a Colonel under British General Edward Braddock. Out of 1,400 British troops, 900 were killed. In 1765, at age […]